[John Whitworth]

They are running an online poetry competition over on Spectator Coffee House with a prize of a bottle of champagne. Closing date Sunday 23rd October. Subject 'Dirt'. They want it to be short, though I'm not too sure what that means. My entry is as follows, and perhaps not short enough. I told them they could ditch stanza 3. The winner of the last comp doesn't scan properly, so it's not Lucy doing the judging, alas:

Dirt

There's clean dirt and there's dirty dirt, my mother said to me
As she spat and rubbed her hanky on our faces.
And the dirty dirt was what you generally got
When you went on holiday to foreign places.

Take a towel and a flannel when you cross the English channel,
And watch out for creepy-crawlies in your shirt.
If there's water you should boil it. Never use a public toilet
Or you'll fall a prey to very dirty dirt.

For breakfast, lunch or dinner, you'd be wise, and so much thinner,
To say no to any filthy French cuisine.
If you stay for just a week you will know whereof I speak;
Frogs' legs, snails and haunch of horse are what I mean.

Yes it all begins at Calais and up every foreign alley
Heaps of dirty dirt are growing by the minute.
And their wicked foreign habits mean they breed like ruddy rabbits
So it won't be long before we're really in it.